Clinton's First 100 Days

A Democratic View: New Philosophy Is Alive And Well

April 28, 1993|By Al From, president of the Democratic Leadership Council.

In his first 100 days in office, President Clinton has remained largely faithful to his two main campaign promises: to revive the economy by increasing job-producing investment and reducing the deficit and to govern as a different kind of Democrat.

He has pushed through Congress a budget plan intended to restore economic growth and fiscal discipline. He is working on a comprehensive overhaul of the U.S. health-care system.

In addition, he has reaffirmed his intent to "end welfare as we know it" and cut the administrative costs of government. He has launched a major effort to "reinvent" federal agencies: called for creation of a youth apprenticeship system to ensure upward mobility for non-college youth; taken the initial steps toward putting 100,000 additional police officers on the streets of our most dangerous cities; and is proposing bold initiatives for national service and public school reform.

Taken together, these initiatives represent a solid down payment on Clinton's pledge to lead as a "new" Democrat.

Yet the administration also sent mixed signals during its first 100 days. In his economic program, dollars that could have been rechanneled to finance new initiatives like welfare reform or strengthening families with children went instead into questionable expansions of existing programs whose benefits are, at best, temporary.

The administration cut spending less than even Democrats in Congress approved. Its emphasis on mainstream values was less evident than during the campaign.

In short, the first 100 days of the Clinton administration has brought us much that is new and some that is old.

In the next 100 days, the president needs to emphasize the new.

At stake is a chance to build a new Democratic majority. Given the unraveling of the Republican coalition and the general exhaustion of old liberal and conservative thinking, Clinton has a rare opportunity to build a new governing coalition around political innovation.

To that end, the president should stick to five fundamentals.

- He should articulate, clearly and repeatedly, his New Democrat philosophy for governing. He must emphasize robust economic growth over old-style redistribution; individual over group rights; entrepreneurial over the politics of entitlement.

- In addition to continued emphasis on the economy and health care, he needs to push the specific new ideas contained in his State of the Union message: national service, welfare and public school reform, a police corps, youth apprenticeship, a fundamental overhaul of the federal bureaucracy.

- Bill Clinton needs to emphasize the very clear set of values he articulated during the campaign, those of work family and community. What President Clinton believes in and stands for is just as important as what President Clinton does.

- He should stand firm in his campaign pledge to change the rules of the Washington insider game. He is a leader with extraordinary political skills. The administration should not underestimate its own power to overcome the forces of gridlock in Congress.

- As congressional consideration of the president's economic plan moves from the general to the specifics this summer, the administration needs to guard against a replay of the ill-fated 1990 budget deal that boosted spending and taxes while failing to substantially reduce the deficit. The administration embraced the additional cuts proposed by congressional Democrats, and it would do well to push for them when the specific spending bills come up later this year.

Contrary to the conclusion that many pundits seem to be proffering, President Clinton has not and will not abandon the New Democrat philosophy that proved so potent during the presidential campaign. It is the key to his long-term success.

But he will be under constant pressure by party activists and pressure groups to blunt the edge of progressive reforms they deem threatening. In the interest of holding together a broad coalition, Clinton has accommodated these forces and can be expected to do so again.

Clinton's challenge over the next four years is to reconcile the old party and the new. He needs to perform a balancing act, and that is, in part, what we have seen so far.

President Clinton is engaged in a mammoth undertaking. In less than a hundred days in office, for example, he has changed the debate over the deficit from whether to cut to how much. Over the long haul, proposals like welfare reform and national service can become the heart and soul of a new Democratic agenda that will change the debate not only within the Democratic Party but in the country as a whole.

If President Clinton moves the fulcrum far enough, he will have changed America. If he doesn't, it may be a long time before the American people give the Democrats another chance.